


Feathers From Bone

by thetreesgrowodd



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Magic, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-04
Updated: 2013-12-04
Packaged: 2018-01-03 10:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1069568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetreesgrowodd/pseuds/thetreesgrowodd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson was not. Then he was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feathers From Bone

**Author's Note:**

> From [Strangelock](http://archiveofourown.org/users/strangelock)'s prompt.
> 
> Warning for possibly squicky descriptions of dead things.

John Watson was not. Then he was.  
  
No, that made it sound too simple, as if it happened in an instant like a bird taking flight. It was more like a bird's skeleton growing into a complete, living bird, but slowly and in the wrong order. Awareness first. Feathers sprouting from bare bones. A beak cutting through living flesh. Then the bird was whole, and was taught that it was a bird, and it learned the mechanics of its own wings through diagrams, and _then_ took flight.  
  
John felt it all, even when he was still in pieces. A voice spoke (John didn't have ears yet, but he heard it anyway) and the decay was driven out. Hot blood welled in his flesh. His body knitted together. Eyed filled his sockets, and when they were ready to work, his lids parted.  
  
He watched the leaves on the trees outside his window drop, then regrow, then turn red-brown again. A man often sat and watched him, and sometimes spoke, but John didn't know what a man _was_ , only that he was different from the other things that surrounded him and far more important.  
  
One day, John realized that the man wasn't there. He looked around his room and today he knew what a room was, what a door was, and that there was likely another room nearby with that man in it. Today he knew that a man was a creature like himself, with feelings and a sense of being alive.  He stood up and walked out into a hallway.  
  
It only took a few moments to find him in a room down the hall, but all that time John was aware of something hot in his chest and a sense of urgency.  
  
The man looked up when John walked in, then sat forward and stared at him. Memories stirred in the back of John's mind like images from a dream.  
  
The man got to his feet. "Afterlife or nothingness?"


End file.
